Overview
- Critics from major outlets praise Hasan Hadi’s debut for its neorealist rigor, textured imagery and humanistic focus on ordinary lives under dictatorship.
- The story follows nine-year-old Lamia, randomly chosen at school to provide a birthday cake for Saddam Hussein in a state-enforced ritual.
- Set in an April 1990 window treated as a composite period, the film folds in the invasion of Kuwait and the resulting sanctions and U.S.-led bombing to depict shortages, bribes and scarce medicine.
- Reviewers single out the largely nonprofessional cast—led by newcomer Baneen Ahmad Nayyef—and the tactile cinematography by Tudor Vladimir Panduru.
- Some reviews object to archival material used in the finale as narrowing the political frame, and coverage notes the film’s Camera d’Or and Cannes audience award.